Not NOOBS on my SD, in fact I noticed there was a new Raspbian image released on the 24th so I loaded that and did everything one more time from scratch. Got the same nasty warning. (I think the first time somehow I hadn't cleared the partition table from previous work, but this time I totally reformatted the flash). Anyway, this is what I got this time:
----------------------------
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo gdisk /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.5

I tried to attach screen shots from my GParted GUI run but had the same problem as an earlier poster who got tangled up with SSH and couldn't make a screen copy to insert here. But GParted showed two devices, /dev/mmcblk0 and /dev/sda.

I felt obligated to follow up on this since I introduced this issue so I am posting the above information, although I don't personally really need the extended method since I have a simple configuration and usage. Should have stopped while I was ahead. Some Googling suggested I should just ignore this ominously stated warning message so I am going to proceed using my SD/flash setup as is and see if I run into problems. So on to my Lighttpd/SQLite/WordPress install I go, writing my WP database to a new flash partition. WP installs are always a joy....

miamia wrote:thanks, but what prefix for blkid shoudl I use in /boot/cmdline.txt? "root=PARTUUID="?

I found on internet this: root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxxxxx. Maybe it helps.
EDITED: my RPi cannot boot with root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxxxxx. With root=dev/sda1 everything works ok.

I'll share the PARTUUID and UUID configuration which works for me just in case somebody else comes across this issue (perhaps after reading all the conflicting advice available on the internet). NOTE: I do not use a USB stick, but the following is the way I mount the main MicroSD card on my B+ running Raspbian Jessie (3.18.1+):

UUID=936C-7154 /boot vfat defaults 0 2UUID=c1398422-7a7c-4863-8a8f-45a1db26b4f2 / ext4 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 1
# a swapfile is not a swap partition, no line here
# use dphys-swapfile swap[on|off] for that

Paulv, Thank you very much for this well written tutorial.
I just finished moving my file system to a hard drive on my B+.
Your instructions worked perfectly.
Couldn't have done it without your help.
Thanks again.

George in New Jersey.
(learning a little bit every day.)
(and darned confused most of the time!)

OMG! Way too many steps! Maybe something could be adapted from Berryboot, which as a matter of course allows you to select whether to install to an SD card or to USB memory, etc (effortlessly!) http://www.berryterminal.com/doku.php/berryboot

jamesdinsmore wrote:OMG! Way too many steps! Maybe something could be adapted from Berryboot, which as a matter of course allows you to select whether to install to an SD card or to USB memory, etc (effortlessly!) http://www.berryterminal.com/doku.php/berryboot

The RPi has been developed for learning something, not to supply one click solutions for everything. And you can learn a lot, if you work through this great HOWTO.

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I'm trying to set up the boot partition to be on my hdd that is normally connected to my pi as a media storage device, so most of these changes are being done in raspbmc not raspbian (will that make a difference?)

Created a partition in windows, which was then formatted in the steps on this how to (I skipped the delete/create partition stages). I set it up using /dev/sda2 which was to be the boot drive.

DougieLawson wrote:The boot partition MUST be the first primary FAT or FAT32 partition on the SDCard or the Raspberry Pi can't boot.

The root filesystem for any Linux based operating system must use a Linux native filesystem (ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, etc), you can't use Windows native filesystems (FAT, FAT32, exFAT or NTFS).

As usual, I think the responders (to this last query) are totally missing the point.

Yes, the poster was a little loose with terminology, since, as we know, you can't really "boot" off of anything other than an SD card. But it is clear from his text that he has gotten past that hurdle, since he is booting; it is just failing to mount the roots. So, he must be booting from the SD card (to get as far as he did).

Now, having said all that, let me comment that, from a purely functional point of view (i.e., not counting the aesthetics of the situation), there really isn't all that much point in "moving the filesystem to a USB stick" (the title and nominal subject matter of this thread). To my mind, because of the fact that you always have to have the SD card for booting, means that you might as well just leave the system there as well.

Aesthetically, I can see reasons for doing it, but if you're the "I just want it to work" type, then it is probably not necessary.

Myself, I did it for the simple reason that I didn't have any micro-SD cards bigger than 2G laying around, so I couldn't fit the system onto the SD card when I "upgraded" to the B+.

And some folks need to stop being fanboys and see the forest behind the trees.

Joe Schmoe wrote:...
Now, having said all that, let me comment that, from a purely functional point of view (i.e., not counting the aesthetics of the situation), there really isn't all that much point in "moving the filesystem to a USB stick" (the title and nominal subject matter of this thread). To my mind, because of the fact that you always have to have the SD card for booting, means that you might as well just leave the system there as well.

Aesthetically, I can see reasons for doing it, but if you're the "I just want it to work" type, then it is probably not necessary.

An USB stick is no great alternative to running it from SD, but a HDD really is: much faster, no SD card corruption any more and lots of space for data.
So the title of the OP is a bit misleading, but in fact it is the best tutorial for running your root FS from any USB media.

mmfc did not follow the tutorial closely and that's why he completely messed it up.

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Hello
I have some troubles after moving root folder to usb when sudden power cut-off occurs. In some of these cases (not all of them but 80% of them lets say...) I have got an error after color booting image

sh:can't access tty;job control turned off

In order to get raspberry to boot I remove the SD and The Usb stick and then plug them in again and then it boots without problem (sometimes I need to repeat the remove-plug in procedure once more in order to start working).

I did not follow the procedure of this forum for moving the root to usb, I followed an other one, more Simple .
First after reading about the rootdelay parameter I thought that may be this is what I need. But no lack....

I added avoid_safe_mode=1 into cmdline.txt but nothing changed.
I noticed that when I remove the RTC (clock) module the error does not occur.
When the root folder was in SD there were no problems of this nature (only corruption problems )
I am confused......

Because this is going to be a remote system with no person to remove/plug-in the devices is there a way to solve this.....

A big thanks to all the contributors to this thread... I am running my Raspberry Pi B with the root filesystem moved to an old 1TB external USB hard drive. I imagine an always-on Pi would enjoy more robust performance from a hard drive than an SD card.

Hi. Thanks to this thread, I have been running an old PiB for many months from a usb stick. Thank you all

My PiB sd card is actually a micro sd running in an Adafruit adapter.

Now I have a Pi2. I wish to move the PiB micro sd and usb to the Pi2 as is, hoping to avoid lot of configuration. On the PiB, have run sudo update, upgrade and so on, I have read this is needed to move a SD card to the Pi2. Then plugged the micro sd into the Pi2, usb into a slot but it doesn't boot, no nothing if hdmi is plugged in, just a red light. The psu is a 1.5A 5v supply so pretty sure it is not that.

359 wrote:Hi. Thanks to this thread, I have been running an old PiB for many months from a usb stick. Thank you all

My PiB sd card is actually a micro sd running in an Adafruit adapter.

Now I have a Pi2. I wish to move the PiB micro sd and usb to the Pi2 as is, hoping to avoid lot of configuration. On the PiB, have run sudo update, upgrade and so on, I have read this is needed to move a SD card to the Pi2. Then plugged the micro sd into the Pi2, usb into a slot but it doesn't boot, no nothing if hdmi is plugged in, just a red light. The psu is a 1.5A 5v supply so pretty sure it is not that.

Any thoughts on how to accomplish this?

Overclocking / Overvolting is a bit different between Pi1 and 2. Remove all overclocking settings in config.txt.

I've successfully replaced two Pi1s with Pi2s with the root FS on HDDs.

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